The Ford Focus has all manner of interesting tech party tricks -- automatic parallel parking and road-sign recognition to name just a couple. Its in-car entertainment features, however, have always been a little old-school, on European models at least.

Ford is all set to right this wrong by installing its amazeballs Sync infotainment package in European Ford cars from 2012, giving Ford vehicles extensive voice control and rolling Internet access.

Sync, which also allows drivers to dictate text messages and sat-nav destinations and verbally select music, has been available as an option on American Ford models since 2007, where it's installed in more than 3 million vehicles.

Ford has been reluctant to bring it to Europe, due in part to the difficulty involved in making the system understand the dozens of languages, dialects and bizarre accents used on this side of the pond.

Any comprehension problems seem to have been ironed out, however, as Sync will be able to understand 10,000 commands in US, UK and Australian English, European and Canadian French, European and US Spanish, and European and Brazilian Portuguese. It'll also decipher German, Italian, Dutch, Russian and Turkish, and, beyond Europe, Arabic, Korean and Japanese.

Sync also allows Ford cars to function as rolling Wi-Fi hotspots, either by pairing with a 3G-enabled mobile phone or by connecting to a 3G dongle via a car's USB port. The system allows users to surf the Web on multiple wireless devices, or to access the Internet via the car's in-dash display.